Ahh the famous dogwood fruit. Who doesn't know it.
Well I for sure, I had never heard of it till the day I got a mail. That mail originated from a reader of my web-log who was also participant of the Dutch Bibere winemakers forum.

Ewout had found out where I lived and he lived in the neighbourhood. He wrote me a mail in which he asked if I had ever made dogwood wine. And if I was aware that there were some dogwood trees in our immediate surroundings.

Well I would not recognise a dogwood tree even if I tripped over it, but this would change. Ewout invited me to go on a morning harvesting tour. Well that is surely what we did.

On a beautifull saturday morning in september we met at a crossing in our neighbourhood. We both arrived on bicycle and I brought along some buckets for harvesting. Ewout was accompanied by his girlfriend and they carries a stick with a hook and a large canvas. We got aquainted and started our quest.

As said before i would not recognize a dogwood even if I fell over it, but that was about to change. Ewout knew exactly where they grew and slowly I started to recognise them too.

The Dogwood tree is a tree which hight can vary from 2 to 6 meter. Spring brings yellow flowers to this tree which give the tree its name in the Netherlands: gele kornoelje. In which 'gele'means yellow.

The leaf looks a bit like a peach and has clear vains.

The berries which are our goal have a red to dark red colour. They are as big as an olive and look a bit like olives. The official name is Cornus mas.There is a variety which has crenayted leaves and carries a fruit that looks far more exotic. This variety is often found in gardens as an ornamental plant, but is more scarce in the wild.

And then there is a variety with white flowers. The berries of this variety are very harsh and therefore not suitable for winemaking.

Harvesting is done in a similar way that olives are harvested. One puts a large canvas beneath the tree and the tree is shaken. Or with a large stick with a hook the branches of the tree ar shaken. The berries then drop from the tree. Now it is clear why Ewout was carrying the stick and canvas. The photo shows how we were shaking the branches of the tree.

After a while we had a reasonable harvest.

When the berries have been harvested they have to ripe for a while. They only ripen when they have fallen from the tree. Unripe berries are very harsh and acid. So taste regularly to decide wether they are ripe.

WARNING.There are a lot of poisenous berries out there. They can make you very sick or even worse. So please do not start harvesting in the wild unless you are absolutely sure about what you are doing. Better is to go out with an experienced guide.

Dogwood wine.

The fact that I have not heard about something does not count for much, there is a lot in this world I have never heard about. However i am never to lazy to learn something so I started a quest on the internet.
I learned that Dogwood wine has been made for a very long time. In Germany it is called Dirndl wine (not to be mistaken for the traditional dress with the same name) amd in France it is known as vin de Cornouille.

Riping.

I poured the berries at home onto a piece of absorbing paper that I had laid in a crate. This way the berries could ripen further in my home. After a week i did not dare to wait any longer as some berries had allready wrinkeled. I was afraid that they might start to rot.

The quantity

We had harvested 1480 gram berries. Ewout later on brought me another 1825 gram which he had harvestedc earlier on and stored in his freezer.

And besides that he brought me a few jars of jam which he had made himself. The jars of jam weighed 1188 gram. So all in all I had 4492 gram. So almost 4 and a half kilo.

Day 1

I got the frozen dogwood berries from the freezer and poured them in a primary. The primary was put at a warm spot so the frozen berries could thaw.

Day 2

The dogwood berries had thawed and I added the rest of the harvest. I also added the jam.

Using a potatoe masher I mashed it all till it was pulp. Next I poured some sulphite over the pulp and a few large tablespoons of pectic enzymes.

I decided to make 10 liter wine out of this pulp.

As I never made this wine before I could not estimate well how much volume of my pulp there would be left in the end. The beriies have pits which do not add volume to the juice. And then there is always part of the flesh and skins that would not contribute to the amount of juice left. So estimating the quantity of juice would be a gamble that I should make on my overall winemaking experience.

I estimated that 4,5 kilo berries would certainly not gain 4 liter of juice. I thought it would bring me 2 to 3 liter juice. Next there is always my yeaststarter that I add to my must which is made of 1 liter applejuice. And certainly I would need to add some sugar.

Therefore I decided to add 6 liter water.

So as stated I made my yeaststarter according to my proven recipe which you can re-read here. A yeaststarter adds a healthy, vigorous fermenting yeast colony to your must. This makes certain that fermentation will take off swift and therefore there is less chance on spoiling.

Day 3

The yeaststarter was indeed fermenting vigorously and the pectic enyzmes had done their job. So itm is time to do the measurements.

First I measured acidity, I did that by using titration and the white-tile method. This is the easiest method for measuring acidity. Long time ago I published a 5 part series on measuring acidity on this web-log. You can find that series (and specially the last part which describes the easiest method) here.

The measurement indicated an acidity of 8 !!!

So even after adding 6 liter water the day before the acidity still was 8 gram acid per liter. That is a lot.

Next I measured the SG using my refractometer. Measuring the SG using a refractometer will only need a tiny drop of your must and is not temperature dependant. When measuring the SG with a hydrometer you will need a whole lot more must and you will have to watch the temperature. The many advantages of a refractometer can be re-read here.

My refractometer indicated an SG of 1040.

My own SG table (which can be downloaded here) tells me that an SG of 1040 at an acidity of 8 indicates that there is 79 gram sugar per liter present in the must.

Sugar Calculation.

The must was not dark red. So this would be a blush wine. A blush-wine needs a modest amount of alcohol. 11% will be enough and I decided to aim my calculations at that.

As stated above I had 4,5 kilo berries which gained an estimated 2 to 3 liter juice. next i had hadded 6 liter water. So the current volume of my must would be around 8 liter.

So I had 8 liter must which contained 79 gram sugar per liter. That makes a total of 8 x 79 = 632 gram sugar.

According to my calculations I needed 1980 gram sugar. We subtract the 632 gram which are already in the must present so we need to add 1348 gram sugar ourselves. But there is a trap. I already made a yeaststarter which contained also 200 gram sugar (100 gram in the juice and I added 100 gram). So we have to take that in account which sums the calculations up to:
1980 (needed sugar) - 632 (in the must) - 200 (in the yeaststarter) = 1148 gram sugar to be added.

So I put a large pan on the fire and poured 1 liter water in. While stirring I dissolved in it the needed 1148 gram sugar and also added 10 gram nutrients.
Next I let it cool down until it was lukewarm and then I added this solution to my must.

The yeaststarter was also added to the must and then the primary was covered with a cheesecloth fastened with a rubber band.

From that moment on the must was stirred three times each day. Stirring makes sure that the pulp stays in contact with the juice and that leeds to dissolving all colour, flavor, sugar, acid etc from the pulp into the juice. Stirring also helps preventing spoilage of your must.

Day 5

Something was nagging me. I did not like it.

I was making a wine that had an alcohol percentage of 11% and an acidity of 8. That is way to much.

So I made a decision.

I had some ripe bananas. I pealed those and weighed the flesh. It was 1700 gram.

So I put these 1700 gram bananas in a pan, mashed them with a potatoe masher and added 4 liter water. Next I boiled this for about 15 minutes. While boiling I added and dissolved 700 gram sugar.

This would gain me about 5 liter bananamust that had enough sugar to get to about 8% alcohol.

The calculations for this are as follows.
700 gram sugar is dissolved in 5 liter must so that is 140 gram sugar per liter. So these 140 gram per liter would make 140 / 18 (grams needed for 1% alcohol) = 7.77% alcohol.
And that is not counting the sugars which are in the bananas, these would make sure that this 5 liter must would get 11% alcohol.

After about 15 minutes there was a brownish/grey bananamess in my pan which I cooled down and added to my dogwood must.

I did not add any more acid, it was my intention to bring acidity down. Bananas do have some acid which ytou normally don't notice. It would however be enough to bring balance to my dogwood wine.

Day 7

I decided to transfer the fermenting must to a carboy as the vigorous fermentation was over.

For this I used my bucketsieve.

A bucketsieve is just what the name already indicates. A sieve made out of buckets. It is a very handy aid for sieving large amounts of pulp and is made in an instant. I can guarantee you that even the most clumsy winemaker can make on in 10 minutes without any effort. How to do it can be read here.

Remember that my original recipe was for 10 liter but I added the bananas. So I now had 15 liter must. Fortunately I have several 10 and 15 liter carboys.

The carboy was closed with an airlock and stored in a warm spot.

Five months later.

The wine had finished fermenting and had cleared fantastic.

I called Ewout and we bottled it together. We ended up with 17 bottles of Dogwood wine.

The wine

Well I can not explain the flavor of dogwoos just as I can not explain how apples, strawberries or bananas taste. Ewout however mentioned that he could clearly taste the banana's in this wine. I could not. But besides banana flavor there was something else present and that is off course the dogwood berries.

The wine was fantastically clear and had a light red colour.

The recipe.

By now you will have understood that I can not give you a straight recipe. I had berries, I also had jam of which I did not the consistancy and I needed to add banana's to bring acidity down.

If everything turns out as I want to I am going to make this wine this year again. This time I will try to ripe them longer to see if acidity goes down.

However if you want to try to make this wine follow the next guidelines:

- Use 4 to 5 kilo berries for 10 liter wine
- Mash them and add pectic enzyme.
- Add 5 to 6 liter water
- Make a yeast starter
- Now wait 24 hour for the pectic enzymes to do their job.
- Take measurements
- Adjust sugar level and acidity acoording to your measurements.